Northwest Hardwoods Inc. has yet to comment on the closure of its Centralia location that includes the termination of 70 full-time positions.
The national company that produces hardwood for use in products such as flooring and cabinetry, filed a worker adjustment and retraining notification with the Washington state Employment Security Department (ESD) on Tuesday, March 3.
The official notice was filed with the ESD by the company's Vice President of Human Resources Todd Bruhn. It was later published to the department's website. The notification lists 70 individuals for “separation” from the company and includes nearly 40 different job titles or types.
Those who will lose their jobs include teams operating sawmills, boilers, kilns, planers and forklifts.
The company also eliminated multiple electrician roles as well as many planning and administrative roles, like those for scheduling, maintenance and product inspection.
The notice and a letter obtained by The Chronicle titled “notice of employee separations at Northwest Hardwoods Centralia” lists May 2 as the state of “separation” for all affected positions. However, the state’s online database lists March 5 as the layoff start date.
The letter, which is dated March 3, confirms that the layoffs are expected to be permanent.
It also states that the mass layoffs will not result in relocation or contracting out of the terminated positions, suggesting that the 70 positions will be eliminated from the company entirely.
Northwest Hardwoods Inc. has not released a larger explanation for the closure of the Centralia site despite multiple attempts to contact the company's administration.
The official notice sent to the ESD simply states the reason for the layoffs as “closure” and states that these terminations are expected to be “permanent.”
The closure of the Centralia site comes nearly four years after Northwest Hardwoods relocated its headquarters from Tacoma to Frisco, Texas, in April of 2022.
Northwest Hardwoods’ local sawmill location is at 3000 Galvin Road in Centralia.
According to the company website, Northwest Hardwoods Inc. first purchased the Centralia facility in 1969, just two years after the company's foundation by Arnold Curtis in Arlington, Washington.
The company merged with Industrial Timber and Lumber Company in 2015.
It currently lists four manufacturing locations in the Pacific Northwest, including the Centralia site. Another is located in Longview and two others in Garibaldi and Eugene, Oregon.
Northwest Hardwoods Inc. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2020, seeking to eliminate $270 million in debt and financially restructure the company, which had 30 facilities across North America at the time.
As of 2020, it served more than 2,000 customers in 60 countries and had an estimated annual hardwood lumber capacity of 320 million board feet.
